Climate Change Has Increased Wildfire Area by 16,000 Square Miles

Posted on October 12, 2016

New York Times: "In a new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Idaho and Columbia University have calculated how much of the increased scope and intensity of Western wildfires can be attributed to human-caused climate change and its effects. They state that, since 1979, climate change is responsible for more than half of the dryness of Western forests and the increased length of the fire season. Since 1984, those factors have enlarged the cumulative forest fire area by 16,000 square miles, about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined, they found."

“'People tell me that they’ve never seen fires as active as what they’re battling right now,' Dr. Williams said. 'What we’re seeing in fire world is much different than what we saw in the 1980s, and in the 2030s, fires will be unrecognizable to what we’re seeing now.'"